When young Ali was growing up in a small village in a remote region of Mali he earned the nickname Farka, which means donkey, because of his stubbornness. He wasn’t allowed to play music for cultural reasons, but he went ahead and made himself an improvised one string guitar from a tin can and a bit of string anyway. He quickly picked up the distinctive sound of the region and earned a reputation as a guitarist of note, learning how to sing in seven different languages too.
Some time in the 60s he heard the music of John Lee Hooker for the first time and wondered how this American musician was playing tunes that sounded like the ones he’d grown up with. He quickly realised that the blues must have been an evolution of the much older traditions that he knew. The instruments and languages may have changed, but the feelings were still the same.
I remember hearing this music on the radio sometime in the 80s on a late night show and was charmed by it, even if I couldn’t understand the words. The American musician Ry Cooder was similarly enchanted and tracked down Touré to make an album with him, bringing the best of both worlds together.
Apparently Touré wasn’t happy with his time in America, calling it a ‘spiritual car park’, and some of that sadness and longing for home can be felt here. It’s still a good place to start listening though and will hopefully lead on to people listening to other albums from this truly remarkable musician.
When I was a child Timbuktu was always a mythical place, as far away from home as it’s possible to be. Perhaps we’ve always had it wrong, and it’s Timbuktu that’s home and we are the ones who are lost?
https://album.link/gb/i/1528519970
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